


Jack Fiddler and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad night

by TheIcyQueen



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Horror, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:39:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27105100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheIcyQueen/pseuds/TheIcyQueen
Summary: Yeah, okay, sure, so the kids had a pretty rough time in Blackwood Pines that night, but it's not like it was a freaking walk in the park for Fiddler, now was it???Jack's getting too old for this shit.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Jack Fiddler and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad night

**Author's Note:**

> This might strike a few of you as familiar - this was the one (1) contribution I made to the UD Anniversary event on tumblr, haha! 
> 
> Look. I know Supermassive handed us all a slew of characters with interesting personalities and backstories and relationships...but yes, I did become emotionally attached to the spooky old man who shows up just long enough to say cryptic shit before dying horribly. That's sort of my thing. 
> 
> So. An ode to Fiddler - press F in the chat to pay your respects.

Damn kids were going to be the death of him. It was like they _wanted_ to get themselves killed, like they were having _fun_ toeing the line between life and death, like they had been sent there for the _express purpose_ of feeding the mountain and trying his patience.

He was getting too Goddamn old for this.

He’d warned the Washingtons and they hadn’t listened, and that was all fine and good because they reaped what they’d sown, hadn’t they. Funny how life had a way of working out like that—funny not in the laughing sense maybe, but funny in the other way, the way that kind of made you shake your head and breathe hard out through your nose. The Washingtons hadn’t listened and they’d lost their girls for their troubles, one in a very literal sense and the other in a more, well…he wasn’t much of a headshrink, but it struck him that the loss of the other was more a metaphorical thing, a _spiritual_ thing. And Lord Jesus in High Heaven above, if he didn’t play his cards right tonight, they were going to lose the boy, too.

Then again, he’d seen the kid skulking around the property the past few months, head low and shoulders hunched, always dragging something behind him, always carrying a smell the pups didn’t like, so Jack had to wonder if maybe they hadn’t _already_ lost him. Again, in that metaphorical sort of way. The spiritual way. Just because someone was flesh and blood, living and breathing, well that didn’t mean they were still _there_. He knew that.

Oh, he knew that much to be sure.

It had been pure, dumb _luck_ that had dumped the kids onto him. There he’d been, just minding his own Goddamn business while doing his dailies, checking the grounds where he’d known the girl-thing to hunt, and he’d heard them: The laughs, the voices, the _kids_. The Goddamn _kids_. And at first he’d believed it was a trick—it was safer to err on the side of caution, that’s what his time on the mountain had taught him—because the voices you heard weren’t always the voices that were there, so he’d doubled back, moving quick and snake-like despite the weight of his pack, and he’d watched them from the dark.

The same ones from last year, had to be. He hadn’t cared to learn much about them (the evening news had a way of making his digestion run sour), but them coming back told him all he needed to know.

Namely, that they were idiots.

Every last one of them.

_Idiots_.

He’d never had children of his own, crazy ol’ Jack Fiddler, at least not unless the pups counted, and his disdain for idiocy was very near the top of his reasons why. There was a special kind of stupid that hit a person once they reached a certain age, he’d found, and up there in the Pines, that special kind of stupid was wont to get you torn apart piece by bloody piece.

If he’d had any doubts about whether these ones were in possession of that breed of stupid, well…they were put to rest as he watched the lovebirds _meander_ through the mine, all vocal fry and grand, sweeping hand gestures, making just about as much racket (and _movement_ ) as a rabbit with its leg caught in a coyote’s teeth, and God _damn_ , this wasn’t what he needed. He’d stayed a step behind them, always just a step behind, half-thankful he’d left the pups back in the hospital after all; he wasn’t a particularly sociable man, not after the life he’d had, but if there was anything he knew about people, it was they tended to react, well, _poorly_ when they found themselves facing down the sharp-end of a big dog, and the last thing he needed just then was for those two to go running and screaming and making all sorts of a scene when the girl-thing could be…anywhere.

And really, ‘ _anywhere_ ’ was being a touch generous. He’d seen how she could move, had seen what had happened when the _Makkapitew_ had sunk its claws and teeth into her, biting past her bones and into the silvery flesh of her soul. The worry wasn’t that she could be _anywhere_ , it was that she could be _everywhere_.

If _he’d_ noticed her friends already, well…suffice it to say it struck him as unlikely _she_ hadn’t.

He’d watched the lovebirds trail past his way station (touching all of his shit in the process) and into the guest cabin before he’d turned on his heel and hustled his ass back towards the lodge. He knew the mountain, he did, so there was none of the wandering or exploring the kids had done—for his size, he was a hare in the snow, knowing where to step and where to avoid, what paths were safe to slide down and which would mean death, so he’d managed to reach the hospital grounds in barely a blink.

Quicker to get to the lodge by the access tunnel below, he’d thought; the mines were a spiderweb of veins inside and underneath the mountain, a convenient system for staying out of the cold. A pat to the pups’ heads as he made his way through the main room, narrowing his eyes behind the darkened lenses of his goggles at the high, keening wails coming from the other sides of the walls. They were all in a lather tonight, it seemed. Like they knew what was going on outside.

Like they could scent it on the air.

No matter to him, he was gone as soon as he arrived, ducking his way into the passages he’d walked a million times before. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to the smell of the mines, but that was just fine by him because it kept him on his toes. Rock and old wood, salt and rust, cold and something else, something wrong, something _alive_. They’d been shut down for decades, the mines, but that didn’t mean all the miners had punched out—oh no, oh no, no, no, it didn’t mean that at all. And he would’ve made it to the lodge in a matter of minutes, he reflected, if it hadn’t been for the screaming.

Fiddler jagged right instead of left in time to see the other two falling into the pit (into the _nest_ ) from the fire tower, the ancient structure dangling over the very same cliff where the Washington girls had dangled before them. He saw them drop out of sight, heard them yell, and that brought back all sorts of ghosts he’d thought he’d put well behind him. The Washington girl, the one who’d been lucky enough to die, she’d fallen too. She’d yelled. He hadn’t even been able to get his hand to her before she’d simply dropped out of view, and the other…that thought got shaken out of his head as he peered over the lip of the ledge he’d perched himself upon, squinting with his good eye to try and see whether the brats had managed to survive, and that’s when he realized what kind of night he was in for.

Really and truly, that’s when it dawned on him that he was in for it, that he was about to be twice as busy as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest as the saying went, though given his particular set of circumstances, his legs were the least of his worries. That’s when he knew it, because that’s when he saw her. The other one.

Now the problem with the _Wendigo_ (not that it was possible to pin it down to just _one_ problem, of course) was that it didn’t _matter_ how quick you were, how smart or how strong—they were always more, more, more. Quick _er_ , smart _er_ , strong _er_ , and no matter how badly you wanted to live, they wanted to live _more_.

She’d rounded on him when she’d smelt him, a different kind of ghost, one made of angles and bones; now he found himself _regretting_ leaving the pups because while they might’ve spooked the kids, the fact of the matter was there was no ‘sharp-end’ of a _Wendigo_ , every inch of them was sharp, every breath they drew was death. He’d reached for his gun, never taking his eyes off her, willing his chest to stop moving with his breath, and then she was gone, white enough to dissolve into the snow above and quick enough to become the wind, there and then not, all in the span of a heartbeat.

And he’d known where she was headed.

_Of course_ he’d known where she was headed.

But the _Goddamn kids_ didn’t.

The girl-thing could move faster than him, ‘specially down there in the dark, but that was fine. He’d seen her make mistakes before just as the others before her had. Something about the anger, the _hunger_ , it made them desperate. And while desperation made near about everything on Earth more dangerous, man and beast alike, it could make them sloppy, too. If she was looking for them, if any part of the person she’d once been had seen their faces, heard their voices…maybe there was a chance.

Then again, he was dealing with idiots. He had to keep reminding himself of that: These children, these pampered, simpering _infants_ , some of them hardly old enough to have cut all their permanent teeth, they were _idiots_.

When he heard screaming from deeper in the mine, he couldn’t help but bite back an exhausted grimace. Proof positive.

Idiots.

All of them.

Quiet as death and half as warm, he trailed not the girl-thing but the _girl_ , calling for her once in as sharp a voice as he thought he could risk. She’d screamed again (the word ‘idiot’ flashing across the tangled mess of his thoughts among other pertinent words: ‘shit,’ ‘fire,’ and ‘Hell,’ to name a few), half-stumbling over herself to get away, and while he knew his wasn’t the _prettiest_ of faces, he couldn’t help the bone-deep exasperation threatening to stay his hands. It was as if she _wanted_ to die.

Maybe he should _let_ her.

…augh, but that would never do. He’d never get another good night of sleep with the weight of her on his conscience, so when he saw she wasn’t liable to do much else but wave her torch towards him like he was some kind of Frankenstein, he tore one of the packs from his side and threw it at her—none too gently, he’d reflect later—knocking her backwards and out of sight just as the girl-thing pitter-patted her way into the clearing, mouth wide, cratered tongue lolling out like a bloated slug from between jaws of razors.

Just another Goddamn _kid_ , another fucking _idiot_. Bigger, yes, angrier to be sure, but a _kid_ all the same, driven by that special kind of stupid her friends were.

The gun wouldn’t’ve done shit in quarters that close, so he’d shot off a burst of flame at her instead, the heavy backyard reek of propane filling the cramped space. She’d screamed, swiped once, the point of a claw missing him by so small a margin that he could feel his jacket ripple with the air of the strike. Then she was gone, her shrieks echoing off the walls of the mines. When he turned around, the girl was gone too. Seemed she’d taken his pack for her troubles. Lord in Heaven he hoped she had enough sense to know a flare from a frankfurter.

He doubled back the way he’d come, taking the paths he’d planned before. It wasn’t a long way to the lodge, but it got awful bumpy if you didn’t know where to step. All he could do was hope the rest of them hadn’t gotten it in their heads to go running around where they didn’t belong, that something had kept them safe and warm in the big, fancy resort the Washingtons had _insisted_ on building on top of a tragedy. Maybe they’d even thought to stick together.

He doubted it though.

Because if there was one thing he’d learned about this lot, it was that they were, _indisputably_ , idiots.

And they were like to be the death of him, if he wasn’t careful.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey friends, hope you're all hanging in there as this bizarre year continues to be...whatever the fuck it is. <3
> 
> On the off-chance you don't already follow me there, but you're looking for more UD writing, you can find me on tumblr as queenofbaws - every weekend I take and fill requests for quick little flash-fiction things, so when my uploading gets slow here on AO3, feel free to pop on by and say hello on tumblr ;)


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